


The Only Gods We Worship is Honor and Duty

by ej3467273



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-23 22:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7481892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ej3467273/pseuds/ej3467273
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shots and two-shots on focused on Stannis Baratheon and co. </p><p>A spiritual sequel to one of  LAntoniou's "Go on. Do your duty" chapters. Go read it. It's pretty good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Gods We Worship is Honor and Duty

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Go on. Do your duty.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4159767) by [LAntoniou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LAntoniou/pseuds/LAntoniou). 



> I just want to say that LAntoniou's "Go on. Do your duty" is one of the best Stannis fics I've ever written. One of the chapters is about how Rickon Stark and Stannis meet and it just blew me away. I decided to sort of continue it and hope I do this justice.

**RICKON I**

“When I was eight and ten, my brother, King Robert, revolted against the Iron Throne. Over  _ your  _ aunt, Lady Lyanna Stark. She was kidnapped, or so my brother believed, by the  Prince of Dragonstone, Rhaegar. That was one of the hardest decisions of my life. Blood or honor. King Aerys ruled by every law in Westeros...but there are  _ deeper  _ and older laws. The younger bows before the elder. I followed Robert,” the man began. His voice was filled with scorn, a deep frown that threatened to gut the person opposite of him.

The boy of four and ten gulped. His auburn hair and Tully blue eyes shone in the sunlight gleaming through the solar window, bathing himself in a golden glow. He had matured from his time in Skagos. He had fought against the dead and watched good men die for him. He was the Lord of Winterfell and the Warden of the North.  _ A Stark. _

The man across from him looked as hard as iron. His gaze was unflinching, his eyes telling of battles and horrors that not even Rickon had seen.His eyes were a darker blue than his own, as dark as the oceans he had once sailed in the name of his brother and him.  _ Ours is the fury.  _ His hair had once been as black as night, but it had greyed, just like Shaggydog’s own fur.  _ Iron will. _

“He told me to hold Storm’s End until he returned. He told me to keep our brother safe from harm. When he was defeated at Ashford, I held Storm’s End against the entirety of the Reach. The enemy feasted outside of our walls for an entire year, while our own stores dwindled day after day. If a wagon tried to reach us, it was burnt. If a ship tried to reach us, it was sunk.”

Rickon remembered hunger. Skagos had not been a rich island and the Magnar’s village had not had much food. Though Osha and the people of Skagos had cared for him, often he had gone hungry, for there was no food. And that had been only for a few short months.

“First we ate the horses. We weren’t riding anywhere, so fine the horses. When Robert was fighting at the Battle of the Bells, we ate the cats. I never liked cats, so fine, the cats. When Robert smashed Rhaegar’s chest in at the Trident, we ate the dogs. I like dogs, loyal creatures, but we ate them. When the Lannisters sacked King’s Landing and Ser Jaime Lannister sullied his oaths, we ate the rats. Mace Tyrell, Lord Fat Flower, sieged Storm’s End and the banquet table, and unlike us, he could conquer feasts. We would have eaten our own dead, if a smuggler had not slipped past the Redwyne fleet.He brought us salt beef and onions.”

The mention of onions made Rickon want to frown. He never liked onions and he never liked how his mother had tried to sneak it into his food. For a short time, while he was on Skagos, he had missed food, even onions. Being back at Winterfell made him remember why he disliked the foul tasting food in the first place.

“He was justly rewarded for his actions with a knighthood. And then I removed the tips of four fingers on his left hand. For a good act does not wash out the bad nor the bad the good. I removed his fingers with a kitchen cleaver. I only had to swing once. From that day on, Ser Davos was my most loyal man and my most trusted advisor. He told me the hard truth. But hard truth cuts both ways.”

_ Ser Onion Knight.  _ The black ship with a sigil of an onion sewn onto the sails. He had taken Rickon and his direwolf, along with Osha, back to a place where some fat lord had called him king.  _ Wylis Manderly,  _ Rickon remembered him saying. He had refused to even become king.  _ Robb was king, but then he died. Bran was next...but now….he’s a tree?  _

“Though I was half-starved, my brother told me to take Dragonstone from the last Targaryen children. Unfortunately, a storm delayed my arrival and allowed for them to be smuggled to Essos by loyalists. I took the castle by storm. For my reward and my punishment, I was stripped of Storm’s End and it was given to that  _ prancing  _ fool Renly. I was given Dragonstone and named Master of Ships.”

Rickon noted how his voice became lower and there was even  _ more  _ scorn in it. He would have to ask why he hated Dragonstone so much, but now was not that time.

“When Shireen was just a babe and I was a new father, I was called to war once more. The Iron Islands had never lacked in treachery and honor is as foreign to them as the Seven. They raised their banners in revolt and crowned Lord Balon Greyjoy as king.”

_ Ironborn. Traitors.  _ Rickon remembered Theon Greyjoy, the man and turncloak who once called Robb brother.  _ The Prince of Winterfell, beheaded by a weirwood tree.  _ He growled at this reminder.  _ Stop growling. You’re not on Skagos anymore. _

“Lord Tywin was careless and the Iron Fleet caught and burnt his fleet at anchor. So I had to succeed where Lord Tywin failed. I raised the royal fleet and sailed around Westeros. I set a trap for the Iron Fleet off Fair Isle,” Stannis continued to speak and Rickon continued to listen.

“As sailors and warriors, the ironborn are unparalleled. But they’re not  _ soldiers.  _ They have no discipline, no strategy, no  _ unity.  _ Each captain fights for himself and their longships are built for shore raids and lightning strikes. When the captains rushed in, I smashed their ships with my heavier war galleys. The strength of the ironborn is in their ships and now they didn’t have any. I took Great Wyk. Balon bent the knee to Robert. He was lucky. If it was me, he would have bent his neck underneath a sword.”

Rickon sensed  _ pride  _ coming from the older man. He had been a man of five and twenty who had smashed one of the most powerful fleets Westeros had ever seen.

“And then my brother died and I was the rightful king by virtue birth and blood. I made cause with a Red Witch and a foreign god in order to bolster myself. A shadow slew my younger brother. My hands were clean but I loved the man, not for what he grew up but for the boy he was. Remember this Lord Stark,  _ fools love a fool.” _

Gods were naught. The Old Gods had taken his brother away from him and turned him into some tree guarding against the White Walkers. The Lord of Light burnt away the snows but also people, licking at their flesh and greedily eating them whole. The Seven were nothing to him, nothing but foreign gods who had no place in the North.

“The gods mean nothing to me. I stopped believing in them when I was your age, when I saw my father and mother die on the  _ Windproud.  _ What kind of gods take away a father and mother away from a newborn babe and his brothers?”

Rickon nodded at the words. But religion was everything to the people of Westeros, with the Faith Militant running around and this “High Sparrow” promising to lead some kind of “crusade” against the corsairs who plagued the Stepstones.  _ God wills it? Or the Gods will it? _

“I came north of the Wall in order to protect the realm. I had been trying to win the throne in order to protect the realm when I should have been protecting the realm in order to win the throne. I smashed the wildling army under Mance Rayder despite him having twenty times my numbers. And then I marched on Winterfell in order to save Sansa Stark and take back the North from the thieves who stole it. I trapped the Freys at Long Lake and made them drown. The bastard Ramsay Snow tried to defeat me outside of Winterfell with a  _ cavalry  _ charge but my pikemen and halberds broke him. I spiked the heads of Harald Karstark, Ramsay Snow, and every traitor lord who fought for the Boltons and betrayed your brother.”

He could see that Stannis was threatening to smile. He could imagine the man standing triumphant on the battlements of Winterfell, watching the Bolton banners fall and the direwolf of House Stark rise above. _ It could have been worse. He could have burnt his daughter and I could have been killed by the bastard himself, like by an arrow. _ Absurd thoughts.

“And then the real war came. While my most loyal man was smuggling you from Skagos to White Harbor for Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-On-A-Horse, I marched the northmen, the stormlanders, and the wildlings to the Wall in order to meet the  _ true threat.  _ You will never know of the horrors we faced, Lord Stark. How many men the Lady Melisandre burnt, the sacrifices we made to any god who would listen. We prayed to every god there was. Monsters who would not die, swords of ice and snow, and spiders as big as horses. The legions of dead who would not stop until they crawled over our dead bodies. Thousands of mine died. Tens of thousands of them died. Even then, the numbers were too much, even for us. We would have been defeated if not for the fact that the dragon queen decided to arrive with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.”

Stannis then let out a bitter and harsh laugh. Rickon was taken aback by the display for this man was harsh as the winter he had fought through.

_ “ _ For years I thought I was the Prince who was Promised. Azor Ahai reborn. Instead I was a fool with a colorful sword.  _ She  _ was the hero and the dream of spring. I was nothing but the one who tried to hold back the winds of winter. She and her three dragons, and the damned half-brother of yours, burnt the dead and drove them across to the Land of Always Winter. And then I was given a choice. My crown or my life.”

_ That,  _ Rickon remembered. Winterfell was being rebuilt by giants, massive creatures of fur and flesh, when the dragon queen had made Stannis an ultimatum.  _ Bend the knee and I shall make you Lord of Storm’s End. Don’t and you and your daughter will be burnt by my dragons. _

“That was the hardest decision of my life. I had fought for three years to be the king and now this woman was trying to tell that everything I fought for was all for naught? But in the end, I bent my knee. I may be the rightful king, but she proved what Robert proved on the Trident. Swords don’t care about bloodlines and rights. Storm’s End is mine. But it will not be mine forever.”

Rickon nodded.  _ The betrothal.  _ The North and the Stormlands were recovering and trade would be most important.  _ Or that’s what Maester Sam tells me. _

“So Lord Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North to our  _ glorious  _ dragon queen, do you know why I decided to tell you about this?” Stannis asked and Rickon shook his head.

“To...get to know my good-father and his history?” Rickon guessed. Shireen always said that he was brooding just like Jon, a man who dwelt on the past as much as he looked toward the future. Then again, he didn’t know any history. Chalk that up to a war, hiding out on an island for a couple of years, and now he was accompanied by a fat maester and his wildling aide, along with a bumbling toddler.  _ Reading is so hard. _

To his dismay, Stannis shook his head.

“History is important. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, which is why I was so reluctant to betroth you to my daughter. No, but that is not the reason. If you desire to know more about history, speak with Maester Samwell or with Shireen. She has been taught by Maester Cressen and myself and knows her studies well...and for some reason... _ likes you,”  _ Stannis said, hesitating on the last two words.

“No, Lord Stark, this was not to share my accomplishments with you. I am informing you of what I have done as a warning. My daughter is no longer a princess, but she is the heir to one of the most wealthy and powerful families of Westeros. If my daughter is not treated with the utmost  _ care  _ and  _ affection,  _ I will raise my banners and march north. I have done so once and I will so again. Is this warning enough for you?” Stannis asked and Rickon Stark gulped and nodded.

“Aye, you’ve made yourself very clear Lord Baratheon. I will ensure you have less worries,” Rickon promised.

“Fewer.”

_ Grammar.  _ Fuck grammar, Rickon decided, and he now wanted to leave.

“May I be excused, my lord?” Rickon asked, remembering his courtesies like Maester Sam taught him.

“You may,” Stannis granted before looking down at a few reports. “Go on, do your duty.”

Rickon got out of this seat and started to head out for the day. Winterfell was beautiful on a summer’s day like this and he wanted to get some fresh air before he was dragged by the fat maester for his studies.  __ __Sometimes, Rickon thought, he regretted being taken from Skagos.

 


End file.
